


We're on the Rampage in a Robot Dinosaur

by JasperIsAFanboy



Series: The Afternoon Light Cuts to Size [14]
Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Dinosaurs, Gen, M/M, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 17:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14699049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: Or: Heart sent Julian a dinosaur and he's absolutely thrilled about it.





	1. they're approaching the tyrannosaur paddock

**Author's Note:**

> so. ok. so. i love dinosaurs. like a lot. i first saw jurassic park when i was 3 and there was no going back. and bc i love dinosaurs, i was talking to dilan abt 'hey i bet if heart did a jurassic park and cloned a dinosaur and sent it to slink to fuck w him he'd end up keeping it as a pet bc who wouldn't want a pet dinosaur amirite'. and just for shits and giggles i started writing it and. didn't stop? until This. so! Dinosaurs. i tried to make suzie as accurate as possible according to current science, bc i'm a Pedantic Asshole and i know blood drive is inherently unrealistic but i'll be damned if i don't try to impose some realism somewhere on this shit.
> 
> title from 'big robot dinosaur' by the darkest of the hillside thickets. i listen to other bands, i swear. rob tembo is partly inspired by robert bakker (esp his hat), and shares a surname w my second fave 'the lost world' character. chapter titles are all lines from 'jurassic park'.

For a very long time, the only thing Rasher and Julian can do is stare. Rasher thinks back to childhood, to Ray Harryhausen stop-motion and clunky plastic toys and realizes that they came absolutely _nowhere_ near reality. Reality is not dumb lumbering and roaring open-mouthed with scaled skin. Reality is horrifyingly nimble and brightly feathered and rumbling like a distant engine in a voice so deep it’s barely audible and absolute raw power. And _big_. It’s almost impossible to fathom, the sheer size of the thing; seeing a skeleton in a museum is a poor substitute to seeing it alive and moving. The head alone looks like it’s nearly as long as Julian is tall.

“Oh my god!”

The voice behind them is nothing but awe. Rasher glances over his shoulder to see a roadie standing there, his eyes wide behind his glasses and his mouth hanging open. He tips back the straw cowboy hat no one’s ever seen him without. There’s a hooked claw, nearly four inches long, affixed to the band in front.

“That’s a _Tyrannosaurus Rex!_ ” he gasps. “A full-size female _Tyrannosaurus Rex_! Forty feet long, twelve feet high, somewhere between 9 and 15 _tons_ in weight!” He breaks into the biggest, goofiest grin Rasher has ever seen. “Holy shit, holy shit!” He actually pushes between Julian and Rasher as if he doesn’t realize they’re there and goes towards the dinosaur (the fucking _dinosaur_ ) that somehow appeared, overnight, in the camp. “What a big, what a, holy shit she’s amazing oh my _god_ just look at her!”

No one can do anything _but_ look at the animal, it’s a fucking dinosaur the size of a semi with bright rust-orange and brown feathers, the colors zigzagging in uneven stripes down the flanks and phasing to black along its spine. (The feathers phase to cream along its belly.) Rasher had always thought its tiny arms would look comical, if not downright absurd, but there’s enough danger evident in its massive skull and powerful hind legs that there’s nothing absurd about any of it. The Rex turns its head and looks down at the roadie, who freezes. The feathers along the back of the dinosaur’s head, longer than the others, rise in a crest like a cockatoo’s. It turns ponderously and ambles over to the roadie. He’s still frozen, and Rasher can’t tell if it’s in terror or glee. The Rex lowers its massive head and sniffs at him, still rumbling. The force from its breath is enough to easily blow the roadie’s ass-length locs back. Rasher strongly suspects the roadie would die happy if the Rex decides to eat him.

The Rex’s eyes are bright gold in deep sockets. No one dares say a word.

It snorts, blowing his hat right off his head, and licks the roadie, knocking his round glasses askew, and promptly ignores him to move towards Rasher and Julian. (The roadie laughs helplessly and a little hysterically and drops to the ground, sitting and staring at the sky.) Rasher and Julian both freeze, caught in the Rex’s stare, as it comes over to investigate them. It examines them the same as it did the roadie. Rasher, for the first time in a very long time, remembers exactly what prey feels like. The maw rumbles a little, and the Rex fixes a little harder on him. Rasher cusses the maw in his head as the Rex fixates on him. Its jaws part, revealing knife-sharp teeth the size of bananas, as it hisses like an alligator.

“Don’t you dare eat him!”

Rasher tears his gaze away from the dinosaur to stare at Julian. He’s actually standing there with his hands on his hips, glaring up at the Rex as if it’s a recalcitrant roadie he can boss around. The Rex’s big head swings around to Julian.

“Julian, don’t!” Rasher hisses. Naturally Julian ignores him.

“No one cares if you eat the roadies—“

“I do, Julian, and you can’t—“

“—But you cannot eat Rasher! I forbid you to eat Rasher!”

“…Boss around a dinosaur. Oh my god.” Rasher buries his face in his hands.

The Rex lowers its head so it’s almost eye-level with Julian. No one dares to even breathe as they stare each other down like cats. It’s got to be one of the strangest sights in Blood Drive history, Julian having a staring contest with a giant feathery reptile. Rasher hopes it won’t eat Julian, if only because Julian will sulk for days about it. The Rex snorts suddenly, sending Julian’s hat flying like the roadie’s. He bops it on the end of its snout with his cane. Rasher’s life flashes before his eyes as the Rex rears back in surprise, its crest standing again.

“No!” Julian barks at it, like it’s a dog. “Bad!”

The Rex shakes its head and snorts again. It makes that closed-mouth rumble, tilting its head back and forth like a bird, then—

—Lowers its head and butts Julian exactly like a dog would. It almost knocks him flat on his ass, and he laughs and rubs its snout. The scale is absolutely ridiculous, Julian looks tiny next to the Rex. He scratches it under its chin. Its eyes close and it rumbles again. Rasher just watches with his mouth hanging open. The Rex licks Julian, practically head to toe, and he cries out in disgust.

“Go on, fuck off,” he says, though not without some affection. “Silly thing.” He bops its snout again. The Rex lifts its head and turns around, its tail swinging over Rasher and Julian without their even having to duck, and moves off. The roadie picks himself up and chases after it, still singing its praises. Julian watches the dinosaur go with a slight smile on his face. He turns to Rasher. “I think I’m going to keep it.”

“How— how the fuck— what did—“ Rasher closes his mouth while his brain short-circuits for a moment. Finally he manages to regain the capacity for coherent speech. “Julian, why are you keeping it?”

“Why not?”

“Think how much it eats!”

“You ate the entire race and I kept you, didn’t I?”

“That only happened once!” Rasher points at a footprint the Rex left behind. “You think an animal that size couldn’t eat the race on a regular basis? It could probably eat the race and come back for seconds!”

Julian’s ignoring him, reflectively tapping his chin with the top of his cane. “What’ll I call her?” he muses aloud. “Hm.” Rasher wonders why he even bothers. Then Julian turns to him, and there’s something in his eyes that tells Rasher it’s not one of his hare-brained impulses behind his keeping the dinosaur. Julian goes over to Rasher and lowers his voice. “Who do you think is behind that animal? It’s not some kind of long-lost survivor of a 65 million year-old catastrophe, that’s a clone like me. I don’t know how they did it, but Heart made that dinosaur. I don’t think they intended for me to survive her arrival.” He grins. “Imagine the looks on their faces when they see me on camera being best friends with what they thought would be a nuclear bomb.”

Rasher wants to argue, but finds he can’t. Certainly there’s no arguing with Julian in general, but the thing is, in this instance Rasher doesn’t disagree with him. Heart’s the only power on earth that has the capability of pulling off something like resurrecting a dinosaur, and they’re the only ones who ever seriously yank Julian’s chain. They would have known he’d come back if the dinosaur ate him, but maybe they were hoping being eaten by a dinosaur would make Julian more tractable. (If so, it only goes to show how poorly they know or understand him.) And they’re the only ones who could have delivered it without anyone being the wiser for it. Rasher sighs.

“I’m not cleaning up after it,” he says. Julian’s grin widens because he’s won and he knows it.

“Make that roadie do it, the one that practically came when he saw her,” he says. “He sounded like some kind of dinosaur expert anyway.” With that Julian heads off towards his trailer, very carefully holding his arms away from his sides. Rasher wonders if he’s going to burn his clothes, the thought of dinosaur slobber on them is surely agony to Julian.

Rasher turns and looks off in the direction the Rex had gone. The trailers are mostly too tall, but occasionally he sees flashes of orange between the trailers. He sighs and picks up Julian’s hat and follows him. He can’t help but feel this will not end well.


	2. a deplorable excess of personality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the opening scene o this chapter might be one o my fave things i've ever written. i had a fucking blast w it. just wanted to say that. also the line i used for the chapter title is one o john hammond's lines abt ian malcolm, and it. rly fits slink.

“Yes, hello, Julian Slink here. Who am I speaking to today, I understand Geoffrey’s taken a leave of absence.” Julian genuinely regrets that Heart can’t see the way he’s grinning very toothily as he speaks, as he’s fairly certain he had something to do with Geoffrey leaving and he’s proud of it.

“Uh, hi, Julian, this is Gordon—“

“Hello Gordy! I just had a few questions about the not-so-little present you left me this morning.”

“It’s Gordon, actually, and—“

“I’d like to know, Gordy, first of all, if she has a name, I can’t keep calling her ‘the dinosaur.’ Second, how do you recommend I feed her? I’m told they eat quite a lot, and I can’t very well feed her racers or roadies.” Rasher, lying on his side with his head in Julian’s lap, snorts. He’d had a devil of a time convincing Julian the roadies are not dinosaur chow. Julian pets his hair and Rasher closes his eyes, nuzzles Julian’s thigh like a cat. One day, he thinks, he’s going to go down on Julian while he’s talking on the phone. “Thirdly, why the _fuck_ did you send me a dinosaur?”

“U-uh, well, it’s some new, uh, new cloning technology that Heart’s working on, and, uh, we thought, we thought the Blood Drive would be a good place to debut it. And it’s Gordon, not—”

“Really.” Julian’s voice is absolutely flat with disbelief. “You thought a _rally_ would be a good place to send a cloned _dinosaur_.” Rasher has to bite back a very loud guffaw, Julian’s voice is fucking priceless.

“W-well, you’re already showing off the blood engines, so, uh, we… we thought—“

“Good god, you’re spineless. What I’m getting from this is that you have no idea why Heart sent me a dinosaur. I’m not surprised. Well, at any rate, you can tell whoever’s responsible that I think she’s lovely and I fully intend to keep her. What’s her name?”

“They, uh, the scientists in charge of the project were calling it Suzie.”

“Suzie. They called it Suzie.”

“Yeah, since it’s a clone of, of Sue? That, that big fossil they found in, what, Nevada or Montana.”

Rasher absolutely doesn’t have to look up to know that Julian’s expression is a mixture of disdain, disbelief, and something approaching anger. He strokes Julian’s calf.

“What an _appalling_ failure of imagination, Gordy! I hope it hasn’t stuck.”

“Uh, s-sorry, but…”

Julian gives a very loud, very dramatic sigh. He hadn’t really expected any better out of the idiots at Heart. “Fine, Suzie it is. Now how do I feed her? Would you like to volunteer to help with that?”

“N-no!” Gordon actually squeaks, literally squeaks. “No, nope, I’m, I’m good. Uh, just, uh… let me, let me get with the scientists and uh, I’ll g-get back to you!”

There’s a click as Gordon hangs up the phone. Julian bursts out laughing and sets his phone in the cradle. He lifts it off the bed and sets it on the bedside table, moves so he’s lying back against the pillows with his hands linked behind his head. Rasher sits up and slides his hand into the crease of Julian’s thigh. Julian purrs a little at the touch and looks up at Rasher.

“I think that went well!” he says breezily. “And I think I scared another Heart employee into early retirement.”

“Yeah, but you still don’t know how to feed _Suzie._ ”

Julian makes a face at the name. “I hope we can change that,” he grumbles. “Leave it to Heart to name a dinosaur _Suzie,_ just because it’s cloned off a fossil nicknamed Sue.” He reaches up to give Rasher’s goatee a little tug, arches slightly as Rasher rubs his thumb over where Julian’s dick should’ve been. “Hopefully that roadie will figure something out. I think we should name him the official dinosaur-wrangler. What _is_ his name, anyway?”

“Rob Tembo.” Rasher had checked.

“Tell him of his new duties in the morning, will you, assuming Suzie hasn’t decided to eat him.”

Rasher makes a noise of assent and parts Julian’s legs. Julian grins and puts a hand on Rasher’s head to push him down.

 

* * *

 

“Her name is Suzie?”

“Mm-hmm.” Rasher offers no other reply. Tembo stares at him for a moment, then looks over at Suzie, who’s sleeping with her head lying in the bed of a beat-up Ford Ranger that Rasher is certain belongs to Tembo. The bumper sticker depicting a trail of dinosaur footprints is a dead giveaway. The truck’s front tires are almost off the ground.

“I expected something more… majestic,” Tembo says. “Like… I dunno… Ophelia, or… Boudicca. Or, hell, maybe some paleontologist’s name or something. Not. Suzie. Why Suzie?”

“Apparently she’s a clone of Sue.”

Tembo’s dark eyes go almost as wide and round as his glasses. “They cloned a fossil? How’d they do that? Holy shit, the _technology_ involved—DNA’s half-life isn’t—Sue doesn’t even have preserved soft tis—oh wow, how’d they _do_ that? Oh man—“

“Also Julian says you’re in charge of her upkeep,” Rasher quickly breaks in. “Like a stablehand, except you have a dinosaur instead of horses.”

Tembo lights up like a kid in a candy store. “Oh my god, this is the best job _ever_!” he crows.

“Yeah, just wait until you have a pile of shit the size of your truck to clean up.”

But if this occurs to Tembo, he doesn’t seem to care. He looks like he either wants to run and hug Suzie, hug Rasher, or find Julian and hug him. Rasher almost hopes he’ll try to hug Julian; his reaction to being hugged by an overexcited gremlin of a man who smells like a dinosaur would be absolutely hysterical.

“Slink says Heart might be getting back to him about feeding her, but until then you’re on your own,” Rasher says, stepping out of hug range (hopefully). “If she eats anyone important, _I’ll_ eat _you_. Don’t feed her from the fuel pile unless you know she won’t eat the whole thing.”

“Uh-huh.” Tembo barely seems to be listening. “Man, I wish we had a spiked collar for her, think how badass that would be!”

“…Right. Sure.” Rasher decides Tembo’s a lunatic, but possibly a useful one. “I’m going to leave you to it. Good luck.”


	3. problem-solving intelligence

Reluctant as Rasher is to admit it, life with Suzie has not devolved into the sheer clusterfuck disaster he’d expected. Tembo must have some experience wrangling big animals, because he handles her with aplomb, keeping her happy and entertained to she doesn’t rampage through the camp. He’s even worked out how much she eats (Gordon never called back), and it’s less than anyone expected. The corpse pile is more than enough for her. (Turns out a single human body is more calories than she actually needs, so they don’t even have to feed her every day. Julian takes great delight in pointing out that therefore she’s less trouble than Rasher and his maw, at least until Rasher threatens not to sleep with him for a week.) It also turns out that like a crocodile Suzie frequently sheds and regrows teeth. She sheds feathers as well, and Julian takes to collecting both. Rasher doesn’t really want to know what he plans to do with them. Tembo collects teeth now and again as well, starts tying them to the ends of his locs. Rasher can tell Julian wants to spend more time with Suzie, but race prep is taking up too much of his time.

One afternoon, Julian and Rasher are in Julian’s trailer, heads bent over barely accurate road atlases trying to figure out how to get around the Scar without sending the race straight into it. Or Rasher is, at least, Julian is more interested in trying to distract Rasher with his booted foot near Rasher’s crotch. He’s about to set his foot between Rasher’s thighs and press down like he’s pressing a gas pedal when someone knocks at the door, an uneven rapid-fire banging that immediately suggests a catastrophe. Rasher, accustomed to being the one deployed to handle catastrophes, sighs and tries to get up to answer the door, only to trip over Julian’s outstretched leg and fall out of the chair. Julian, naturally, thinks it’s hysterical. Rasher glares at him and goes to the door.

Tembo is on the other side, bouncing up and down and face alight with the kind of glee Rasher usually only sees on Julian’s face when he manages to particularly inconvenience Heart and they can’t retaliate. As soon as he sees Rasher, he bursts out, speaking with the kind of speed normally reserved for livestock auctioneers, “Oh my god you have to see this holy shit, bring Slink, this is fantastic, holy shit I didn’t know _Tyrannosaurus_ could do this fuck Susie’s so amazing—“

Rasher quickly shuts the door and turns to Julian. “I think Tembo wants to show us something,” he says.

Julian very gratefully shoves the atlases aside and stands. He snags his hat and opens the door.

“Slink!” Tembo says immediately. “Slink holy shit come on, you gotta—oh man this is so fucking cool, holy shit, come on come on—“

He vaults off the trailer step and actually sprints off, one hand on his hat, disappearing around the corner of the A/V trailer. After a second he reappears, beckons frantically, and disappears again. Julian just stares openmouthed after him and turns to Rasher.

“Was he like that when you hired him?” he asks.

“No, he barely said a word.”

Julian leads the way out of the trailer, Rasher at his side as always. Tembo’s path is easy to follow; he’s left a trail of bewildered roadies wondering who the tornado in the cowboy hat was. They find him standing near the edge of camp, bouncing on the balls of his feet, a bucket of dismembered body parts beside him. There’s an arm with a hand still attached sticking out, and it looks like it’s waving cheerfully. Suzie is lying down just behind him, head tucked close to her body like a bird’s. Tembo sees Rasher and Julian.

“Finally!” he cries. He turns to Suzie. “Suzie! Suzie! Look here, Suzie!”

Suzie cracks open one gold eye and looks at him. Tembo grabs the arm sticking out of the bucket and waves it at her. Rasher snorts. Suzie rumbles and gets ponderously to her feet. She starts to come forward.

“Ah-ah!” Tembo holds up his free hand, palm out in a ‘stop’ gesture. Suzie stops, her head tilted, and rumbles again. “Suzie, on me, Suzie, look now!” He raises both hands, and Suzie lifts her body. He lowers his hands, as if reaching for the ground, and Suzie goes down as well. Her eyes are fixed on the arm in Tembo’s hand. Tembo moves his hands to the left, then to the right. Both times Suzie follows. Tembo looks over his shoulder and grins. He tosses the arm to Suzie, who snaps it out of the air. The sound of her jaws crashing together is not unlike the sound of a car hitting a semi.

“This is the cool shit.” Tembo picks up another limb, this time a foot with the ankle and a bit of shin. “Okay, Suzie, look!” He holds up the foot and gestures forward with his other hand, like he’s waving her back to throw a football pass. At first Suzie doesn’t react, then, amazingly, she backs up. Tembo laughs delightedly and throws her the foot. He picks up the last chunk of meat in the bucket: a second arm, this one just a few inches of flesh and bone to either side of an elbow, and gestures forward. Suzie comes towards him until he puts up another ‘stop’ gesture. He tosses her the arm and turns to Julian and Rasher. “Well? I fucking trained a _Tyrannosaurus_! I had no idea they were smart enough to be trained! Shit, I didn’t know they were smart at all, conventional wisdom is that they’re dumber than a sack of hammers because they’re lizards, but that doesn’t make sense because they’re the size of pigeons when they hatch so they gotta be smart enough to not get eaten until they’re big enough to do the eating themselves—“

Julian is watching Suzie with a considering look in his eyes while Tembo rambles.

“What else can you train her to do?” he asks, cutting Tembo off in the middle of a sentence about _Tyrannosaur_ brain-cases, their agility in relation to their size, and the top running speed of an ostrich.

“Uh…” Tembo blinks several times, looks a little wrong-footed, as if getting caught in the middle of a thought completely derailed him. He looks over at Suzie. “Uh, I don’t know yet, I only figured out I could teach her this much because I caught her tracking me when I was loading a bucket of parts for her the other day. I mean, _Tyrannosaur_ intelligence is a completely unexplored field, Susie’s the first living one in sixty-five million years, and technically any conclusions from her aren’t valid for the species as a whole since there’s no way she’s pure _Tyrannosaur._ ”

“She looks like one to me.”

“I mean… okay, DNA half-life isn’t anywhere near a million years, let alone some sixty-five million. It’s not viable. So Heart had to have spliced in some other DNA to create Suzie here. I can’t even guess what they used beyond maybe crocodile and bird, or how they did that or how they managed to find _Tyrannosaur_ DNA in the first place. But my point is, she’s basically Frankenstein’s monster, she’s not just dinosaur. She’s manmade, not natural, and she’s in an environment that for her is highly unnatural. I can try to find the latest paleontological research on them, assuming anyone’s doing any these days, but that’ll just give me a rough guide, not a detailed how-to.” He shrugs. “So basically I’m shooting in the dark and hoping I don’t do something to make her eat me.”

Julian makes a considering noise and approaches Suzie, tapping his chin with his cane. Rasher hangs back, he still doesn’t trust her. (Or the maw, since every time he looks at Suzie the maw gets slightly anxious, as if it knows its in the presence of a bigger, more dangerous predator and he doesn’t want to risk it overwhelming his better judgement and trying to pick a fight with her. Maw or not, she could still eat him in two bites.) Suzie lowers her head to Julian, sniffs at him before butting him gently. He rubs under her chin, which makes her close her eyes and rumble. He looks at her teeth, some of which stick out of her mouth like a crocodile’s, at her massive jaws, the claws on her feet (which are comparable in size to his hands). He turns back to Tembo.

“Find out exactly what you can train her to do,” he says. “See how complex you can get with her.”

Tembo lifts an eyebrow. “What’ve you got in mind?” he asks.

Julian gives one of his many grins, one which Rasher knows spells trouble. “Oh, this and that,” he says.

“I…” For the first time, Tembo’s considerable enthusiasm seems to dim. “You’re not… you don’t plan on hurting Suzie, do you? I mean…” He looks at Suzie. She takes a few steps past Julian and sticks the tip of her tongue into the bucket. “She’s a living thing, no matter how she was created.”

Julian plants his cane and links his hands atop it. He gives Tembo a very dangerous look, half excitement and half malice, and says, “Suzie isn’t the one who’ll be getting hurt.”

Tembo eyes him, but Julian doesn’t say a word. He sighs.

“I’ll get back to you,” he says. He looks up at Suzie. “Come on, Suzie.”

Suzie rumbles. She cranes her head around and licks Julian, catching him by surprise. He cries out in abject disgust. Rasher busts out laughing. Tembo evidently can’t decide if he wants to look embarrassed, sheepish, or as amused as Rasher and very quickly beats a retreat. Suzie backs up and turns with all the grace of a semi truck and follows him. Julian shoots a glare at Rasher.

“You _would_ think this is funny,” he grumbles.

“Absolutely hysterical,” Rasher says, once he manages to get himself under control. “What’re your plans for Suzie?”

Julian only turns that maliciously excited look on Rasher. “Come on, we have route planning to do,” he singsongs.

“Before or after you wash the dinosaur slobber off?”


	4. we clocked the t-rex at 32 mph

Rasher isn’t the one who spots the painfully generic sedan coming towards the camp; it trickles to him through the roadies. By the time he hears about it, it’s almost reached them and there’s nothing anyone can do. Julian isn’t around; he, Suzie, and Tembo disappeared earlier in the morning and haven’t been seen since. Rasher suspects it’s someone from Heart; out of everyone who could plausibly be approaching, a Heart employee is the only one who’d drive something that boring. It’s even beige.

Rasher wishes he could just fade into the shadows and let someone else deal with whoever this is; he has completely lost any willingness to deal with Heart employees since they dunked him in the Scar and turned him into a monster. The only thing he wants to do with them is feed them to the maw, and perhaps the fact that the idea only interests and amuses him is a sign that he’s finally getting used to the thing. But unfortunately being Julian’s road manager means he’s stuck dealing with everything when Julian’s not around, and if it’s really a Heart employee he can’t just eat them. So he goes to the edge of camp and does his best to look intimidating as the sedan pulls up. He crosses his arms and lowers his head slightly, silently thanking the midday sun and his bone structure for darkening his deep-set eyes even further. A handful of roadies filter over and flank him at a distance, close enough to be obvious but far away enough that they don’t look like a deliberate threat. But a number of them have brought tools, heavy wrenches and an acetylene blowtorch, and they all look very casually menacing. Rasher’s proud of them. Whoever’s in the sedan waits for the dust to settle somewhat before getting out, and it turns out to be a gawky young man, probably in his thirties or so, in a rumpled and ill-fitting suit, topped with a very rabbity nervous expression. He spots Rasher and the roadies and coughs, compulsively straightens his tie.

“Uh, hi there!” he calls, plastering an unconvincing smile on his face as he walks over to Rasher. “You’re, you’re Rasher, right?” He must be new. He’s standing a lot closer than a Heart employee ought to stand, given how the third season ended. Rasher knows what Heart thinks of him. He doesn’t reply for a moment, just stares at him with his best expression of bored disdain.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m, uh, I’m Gordon—“

“Oh, _Gordy_ ,” Rasher says, snapping his fingers as if in sudden recognition. “Yeah, heard you on the phone with Julian.” He deliberately puts a purr in his voice as he says Julian’s name; Heart doesn’t like that Julian and Rasher are sleeping together, and if Heart doesn’t like something, Rasher’s inclined to rub their noses in it. “What can I do for you, _Gordy_?”

“It’s… oh, never mind.” His smile has slipped several notches, but he hauls it back into place and sticks out a hand. Rasher lifts an eyebrow and looks at his hand. He doesn’t budge. Gordon coughs and lowers his hand. “Is, is Julian around? I, er, Heart wanted to check in with him and Suzie, see how, uh, how they’re getting along.”

“Fine,” Rasher says. “They’re off somewhere.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.”

Rasher lets the following moment of awkward silence stretch like warm taffy. He keeps his gaze fixed on Gordon, who starts fidgeting almost immediately. This man is not going to go far with Heart. Gordon’s gaze jumps everywhere, from Rasher to the roadies to one of the cars in the race, some early bird driver who evidently had nothing better to do and has been hanging around for the past few days. The car’s hood is up and the engine is already covered in gore. Gordon’s nerves visibly ratchet up a few notches when he sees this.

“W-well, I, I, I just, uh, came to see…” Gordon starts to say.

A deep boom echoes across the camp, accompanied by a familiar thundering. Gordon about jumps out of his skin, looks around wildly.

“Oh, Julian’s coming,” Rasher says idly, examining his nails.

The thundering gets louder and louder, and now it’s obviously overlaid by a loud whooping. Rasher hears the startled (terrified) hollering of roadies, cries of “Holy shit!” and “Get out the fucking way!”, and casually steps into the lee of a truck. Another loud boom echoes across the camp. The rapid thundering can be felt now, not merely heard. Suzie absolutely barrels into view along the edge of the camp. She’s not running, but she’s moving a lot faster than anyone would expect out of an animal her size; Rasher would guess between ten and twenty miles per hour, maybe closer to twenty. Julian is sitting on her back, just at the junction of her neck and shoulders, hanging on for dear life (her gait is anything but smooth) and having an absolute blast if the look on his face is anything to go by. He’s whooping like a cowboy riding a bull. Rasher has no idea how she does it, but Suzie’s the one booming like a cannon. She comes to a halt, booms once more before rumbling long and low. Gordon is completely frozen, though he’s letting out a high, constant, thin squeal like someone slowly letting the air out of a balloon.

“Rasher! Look what Tembo figured out! Suzie can be ridden!” Julian cries, completely ignoring Gordon. “I haven’t had this much fun in months!” Then he seems to hear Gordon. His expression turns confused. “What’s that sound?”

Rasher nods at Gordon. “This is Gordy.”

“Gordy! Hello!” Julian gives Gordon a grin that looks about as cheerful and toothy as a shark’s. “Meet Suzie! Suzie, meet Gordy!”

All Gordon manages is a squeak. Suzie lowers her massive head and sniffs at Gordon. He whimpers. Rasher can smell the fear rolling off of him in waves, sweat and adrenalin, and he swallows hard. The maw rumbles behind the corset, reacting with hunger to the scent of terror, and Rasher has to bite back a groan. Gordon and Suzie both hear the maw, and two pairs of eyes find Rasher.

Gordon manages to find his voice, though it’s about an octave higher than before. “What, what, what w-was that?” he asks.

Rasher says, with complete seriousness, “Sorry. That was my stomach growling.”

Julian gives a very undignified snorting laugh as Gordon actually goes grey. Oh, so he _does_ know about Rasher and the maw. He looks like he wants to bolt, but he seems aware that he’s stuck between two predators who will both absolutely eat him if he tries to run. Still, he takes a step back before he thinks better of it, and Suzie’s head swings back around to him. She hisses faintly and starts to move forward. Gordon squeaks again and stumbles backward, falls right on his ass.

“Now, now, Gordy, I wouldn’t run if I were you,” Julian says. “Suzie here is a born predator, she’ll chase you if you run. You might outrun her, but you probably won’t. How fast can you run, Gordy?” Suzie hisses again, more loudly.

For a moment, no one moves. Then Julian pats the side of Suzie’s neck.

“All right, let me down,” he says. Still watching Gordon, Suzie lowers herself to the ground. Julian slings one leg over and slides down. His boots kick up little dust clouds when he lands. Suzie gets back up. Julian strides over to Gordon and hauls him to his feet, then slings a mock-companionable arm around his shoulders. “Tell your master and the scientists that I very much appreciate Suzie, and we’re getting along _famously_. She’s a very good sport.” His toothy grin makes a reappearance, wide and sinister. “She’s _exactly_ what this season needs.”

Gordon nods frantically. “Y-yes, ok, sure, good! G-glad, they’ll, uh, b-be glad to hear it! Uh, uh, I’m, uh, gonna g-go tell them! Right now!”

Julian barely has time to lift his arm before Gordon bolts. Suzie hisses and starts towards him, but at a barked “Stop!” from Julian, she halts. Gordon scrambles into his car. The assembled roadies all laugh as he fumbles his keys into the footwell, all but smacks his head on the wheel ducking to retrieve them. When he finally manages to get his keys into the ignition and the car started, he practically stomps on the gas. The back end of the sedan fishtails wildly, almost sending him into a trailer, before he gets it under control and peels out, to the raucous laughter of the roadies.

“Good job,” Rasher says to Julian as he approaches him. “I haven’t seen someone come that close to pissing themselves since season one and the first bunch of roadies.” Julian chuckles and slips an arm around Rasher’s waist.

“Oh, there’ll be more than a few pissy babies at Heart by the time I’m through,” Julian says. He raps his knuckles against Rasher’s corset and looks over at Suzie, who’s thudding her way over to them. Her shadow falls over them as she lowers her head to butt Julian. He rubs her snout. “We’re going to have a lot of fun this season.” His voice and expression are all anticipation, like a fox eyeing a henhouse. Rasher looks out towards the dust cloud heading rapidly for the horizon, feels a flicker of that same anticipation, that same hunger for carnage and destruction.

Suzie then proceeds to ruin the moment by licking Julian again.


	5. hold on to your butts

They hold the pre-race Mayhem Party outside city limits, almost out in the desert. No one questions it; the groupies don’t care and the racers and roadies know the reasoning behind it. There’s a certain frisson in the air, more than the usual anticipation; no one cares, but everyone knows something’s changed this year nonetheless, and speculation is running wild as to what it is. More than a few eyes turn to Rasher, wondering if he has something to do with it given the end of the third season. (He’d wondered if his rampage would make the race less popular, but it seems the race’s fanbase is more bloodthirsty than that; probably they want to see him turn into a monster again. The crowd is bigger this year than last year.) Rasher’s careful to stay as impassive as usual and give nothing away.

When he’s sure no one’s watching him, he disappears backstage, walks through to the far end of camp, where Tembo is keeping Suzie entertained by tossing her scraps of meat bought from a local slaughterhouse. Tembo has added a collection of teeth to his hatband for the evening, Rasher sees; they’re big enough to have come from Suzie. He’s arranged the teeth by size; the closer to the claw in the center, the longer the tooth. His locs are adorned with teeth and feathers, the vibrant orange and bright white stark and clear against his earthy brown skin and black hair.

“She ready?” Rasher asks.

“As she’ll ever be,” Tembo says, tossing a chunk to Suzie. She snatches it out of the air, jaws very audibly crashing together. The noise of the party hopefully keeps the crowd from hearing her. They’ve done their level best to keep word of her from leaking out.

Rasher nods and goes to Julian’s trailer. Normally it’d be parked right next to the stage, but this year, it’s next to Suzie’s pen. He knocks perfunctorily on the door and heads in, just in time to see Julian putting the finishing touches on his makeup. Rasher waits until he turns, nods when Julian presents himself. Rasher goes to the feathered collar, resting in pride of place atop a mannequin topped with one of Julian’s own skulls. There are new feathers in it, all downy bright orange feathers collected from Suzie’s pen and very carefully cleaned. These are mostly ringing the center, so they frame Julian’s jawline. He’s also attached a chain hung with Susie’s shed teeth that clips to either side of the collar’s base and hangs like a necklace. Both ends are currently clipped to one side. Reverently, he lifts the collar and goes to Julian. He kisses him, careful not to smudge his lipstick, and goes around behind Julian to secure the collar in place. He comes back in front of him to clip one end of the chain to the other side. Once he’s finished this, he gives it a final adjustment so it’s centered, steps back to consider it, then steps close again and nods. Julian pats his cheek, and Rasher turns his head to press a quick kiss to his wrist. He follows Julian out.

Rasher wants to watch Julian ride Suzie all the way to the party, but he has his role to play as god’s herald and besides, seeing him there will be impressive enough. So he heads straight for the stage. As usual, he checks the microphone, heads to the sound panel. He takes a moment to look for Tembo at the edge of the crowd; his presence there is meant to serve as a cue. Rasher spots him, his cowboy hat distinctive among the Mohawks and dyed hair of the crowd. Tembo lifts a bottle of beer. Rasher flips the switch to change the music to “La Marseillaise”. The crowd’s cheers turn louder and more demanding, but when they begin to feel the thuds, they start to quiet down in confusion. Rasher slowly turns the volume down on the music; the timing of this is all-important, and they’d rehearsed the hell out of it all damn day.

Just as the music fades out entirely, Suzie’s booming echoes all around like distant thunder, so deep it’s barely audible above the sound of her footsteps. Rasher turns around, just in time to see Suzie’s head appear over the back of the stage. It’s not the usual backdrop, but only a collapsible mock-up, one designed to drop at the pull of a lever. Rasher gives the right lever a yank, and it drops to reveal Suzie in all her glory and majesty, all forty feet and twelve tons of her, crest standing tall, as she turns slightly to reveal Julian sitting atop her back, right at the junction of her neck and shoulders. It should look ridiculous to the point of absurdity, but its… breathtaking, really. Julian looks every bit a genuine god, sitting astride the greatest predator that ever lived, controlling it with only slight touches from his hands and knees. And Suzie has been specially groomed for this, so her feathers practically shine when the lights swing around to her. She looks worthy of being a god’s steed. The crowd is absolutely transfixed, held in complete awe. This is a spectacle even by Blood Drive standards.

For a breathless, long moment Julian doesn’t move, simply surveys the crowd from behind his sunglasses, head tilted imperiously back. _He’s letting them bask in his glory_ , Rasher thinks, fond and amused. At a tap from Julian, Suzie lowers her head and hisses like a crocodile, making the crowd back up several paces. They’re right on the edge of bolting, Rasher senses, and for the first time a flicker of worry worms into his mind about the whole scene. If they panic and run, he doesn’t know what Suzie will do; she might be a clone, but she has all the instincts of a real _Tyrannosaurus Rex_. If they run, she might give chase, and no one, neither Rasher nor Julian nor Tembo, will be able to stop her. If Julian doesn’t do something soon…

But Rasher’s moment of doubt is in vain, because Suzie lowers herself to the ground to let Julian sling a leg over and slide gracefully from her back. The stage is around four or five feet high, but even so Suzie has to practically lay on the ground for Julian to get down safely. He strides towards the microphone as Suzie stands upright again. She booms once more, then rumbles like an engine. Julian grins at the crowd, looking every bit as toothy as the dinosaur behind him.

He begins his usual speech, full of bravado and braggadocio, and when he gets to the cue for the roadies to start fueling the engines Suzie booms again. It’s absolutely perfect.

Julian grins again once the spectacle of live humans being shoved into the engines has finished. He says, “And the lovely lady behind me is our little guarantee that no one tries to leave!” He gestures back at Suzie. “Her name is Suzie, and your eyes do not deceive you! She is a genuine _Tyrannosaurus Rex_ , and she’s perfectly willing to eat any chickenshit sons of bitches who try to back out of the race!” Suzie hisses. Rasher can hardly believe everything is going this well so far. He knew Suzie was smart, but he didn’t realize she was smart enough to follow cues. “And don’t think your cars will protect you, Miss Suzie has a bite force of around 8000 psi! She can crush your car like a soda can! So if you want to be a snack for nature’s greatest killing machine, be my guest and try to run! She will chase your sorry ass down and devour you like candy!”

The crowd, offered the potential for greater carnage, positively screams in glee. Julian grins and goes back to Suzie. She crouches down again so he can climb up. He guides her to the racers’ marks, positions her to one side. She fidgets a little, it’s a little more cramped than by the stage, but he keeps her under control. Rasher ranges through the crowd to stand next to her, hidden in her shadow.

“Racers to your marks!” Julian bellows. “And we’ll see you at the rendezvous!”

Suzie rumbles as the racers scramble into their cars, then she lets out a tremendous rattling boom that startles everyone, including Rasher. It acts like a starting shot: the racers all gun their engines and peel out. Once the dust settles, Rasher sees Julian look straight into one of the Heart cameras. He raises both middle fingers at it with a sneer:

“Thanks for the pet, assholes!”


End file.
